You Get The Results You Reward

It is a first principle of Change Management that people will act in what
they perceive as being their best interests. This principle is simple to grasp
but hard to apply because each individual has a different concept of what is in
his or her best interests. Richard Cooke, director of change consultancy
I-Change explains how to best align the interests of employees in order to
achieve optimum performance.

It a huge misconception to assume that managing change across an entire
organisation is easy. It isn’t. It is only the individuals within an
organisation who can change, and you can only change one individual at a time.
Therefore, when analysing the perceived best interests of a group of employees,
it is important to consider the following questions for each individual;

Are they more focussed on Long Term or Short Term gains?

What is their financial situation? Clearly if they are having problems paying
the mortgage then money will be more important to them than if they are more
comfortably off

What are their personal circumstances? Do they have young children in which
case time off may be highly valued; or by the same token foreign trips may be
seen as a burden and not a reward

As an organisation you need to first be clear what behaviours / performance you
wish to encourage, and then find ways to align your employees to these. By and
large, you will get what you measure, talk about and reward. However, the
problem comes when you take for granted certain elements of the behaviour /
performance set.

For example, a popular phone directory company allegedly decided that it could
maximise its revenues by getting calls completed within 40 seconds. You may feel
this seems perfectly reasonable, and so it is but there is an underlying (and
unrewarded!) assumption that they do this by providing accurate information.
Some bright sparks soon discovered that it was much easier to meet targets if
you just fobbed the caller off with any old number, in fact if they had a wrong
number they would have to call back!

People will pay attention to what YOU pay attention to. If all you focus on is
the result, then they will (rightly) assume that you are not very interested in
the means they use to achieve them. If you measure volume, don't be surprised if
quality suffers; the same with price v profit. The art of managing a business is
to give balanced signals and rewards that ensure that equal attention is paid to
everything that is crucial to your business.

Think about it, what would a restaurant be like if the chefs got paid based on
their customers rating of their food, or salesmen got rewarded for customer
satisfaction as well as sales; what would it be like to deal with that kind of
company?

It is essential that your reward system focuses people on a set of behaviours
that support both the company's strategy and values. If you need people to show
initiative, you have to reward them when they show it. This may not involve any
cash, often trust is a much more valuable coin; back their idea and let them
learn from it, and reap the glory if it works!

You need a broad, imaginative portfolio of rewards, with multiple options, that
enable you to pick the right 'stroke' for each of your 'folk'. These will span
the spectrum for informal recognition, through more formal things like employee
of the month right up to promotion.

People have a sense of what is the 'norm' in both your company and your industry
and their expectations will be benchmarked by these environmental factors. So do
not ignore the value of being able to surprise people with something unexpected.
It is important not to underestimate the value of a sincere "Thank you", but if
your reward is a personal one (such as this) it must be sincere. Take the
necessary time to make sure that you really show the fact that you are grateful.

However gratitude is a currency too, and as we accrue 'brownie points' we expect
that, over time, these will count towards how we are treated in terms of
promotion and pay. You can only hand out so many 'tokens' before people will
want to 'cash them in', so don't abuse this system.

There is a complex set of theories about the tension between reward schemes and
the power of intrinsic motivation (doing things because they make us feel good).
These are certainly worth exploring, but remember even if we are doing an
interesting and demanding task that stretches us, unless we feel appreciated for
doing this, unless the importance of what we are doing is recognised, we are
likely do become demotivated. In the end, you have to show us it is valued
rather than just telling us, and in today's world, this usually means in cash or
kind!

We will defer pleasure and reward for only so long, then we feel that we are
being taken advantage of and we will seek an environment that affirms our sense
of worth. As human beings, we have a fundamental need to be valued, and we will
always seek out people and places that make us feel this way. Money is just one
way we keep score.

So take a while to reflect on those people around you that you depend on, are
you making them feel special? Are you rewarding the right things in the right
way, or are you running an 'emotional overdraft' with them, in which case, don't
be surprised if they foreclose!

Richard Derwent Cooke is a Facilitator, Coach & Change Agent and the founder
of I-Change. Having worked in the fields of personal and business change for
over 25 years, Richard specialises in working with leaders to clarify, develop
and implement their plans, and bring a strong, practical, supportive approach to
implementing Change. Read more from Richard at
www.i-change.biz/blog or email
info@i-change.biz